Skip to main content

California State Route 217

This past month I drove the entirety of California State Route 217 which is a short freeway located in Santa Barbara County.   CA 217 has a strange western terminus as a Super-Two at the gate of University of California Santa Barbara.


The origins of CA 217 date back to 1955 when the route was added to the State Highway system between Santa Barbara and UC Santa Barbara in Goleta as Legislative Route 236 according to CAhighways.org.  LRN 236 first appears on the 1956 State Highway Map as an un-constructed State Highway.


It appears that by 1963 a functional LRN 236 had been constructed between US 101 in Santa Barbara and UC Santa Barbara.  The completed route of LRN 236 can be seen on the 1963 State Highway Map.


According to CAhighways.org the route of LRN 236 was swapped to CA 217 during the 1964 California State Highway Renumbering and declared Clarence Ward Memorial Boulevard.   The change from LRN 236 to CA 217 can be observed on the 1964 State Highway Map.


According to CAhighways.org the route of CA 217 was legislatively extended to loop back to US 101 west of Goleta in 1965.   The planned extension of CA 217 can be first seen on the 1966 State Highway Map but was ultimately never constructed.


The present route of CA 217 is only 2 miles in length.


My approach to CA 217 was from US 101/CA 1 northbound in Goleta.  I approached CA 217 west from US 101 Exit 104B.






CA 217 is still signed as Clarence Ward Memorial Boulevard despite entire route being a freeway.


CA 217 west Exit 2 accesses Hollister Avenue.




Santa Barbara Airport and Goleta Beach Park are signed as accessible via CA 217 west Exit 1 by way of Sandspit Road.  Traffic is also advised that the freeway grade of CA 217 ends west of Exit 1.








CA 217 west becomes a Super-Two Freeway approaching the gate to UC Santa Barbara.  CA 217 ends just west of the gate of UC Santa Barbara as a roundabout at Post Mile SB 0.464.







The west terminus of CA 217 being a roundabout leads to an oddity where traffic can reverse course onto CA 217 east and resume speeds of 65 MPH.



CA 217 east reverses course to US 101/CA 1southbound.  CA 217 east does have access Exit 3 which is signed to direct traffic onto US 101/CA 1 north.











Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Did Caltrans just kill the G26 cutout US Route shields?

The US Route System was formally created by the American Association of State Highway Officials during November 1926.  Through the history of the system the only state to which has elected to maintain cutout US Route shields has been California.  The G26 series cutout US Route shields have become a favorite in the road enthusiast hobby and are generally considered to be much more visually pleasing than the standard Federal Highway Administration variant.  However, the G26 shield series appears to have been killed off on January 18, 2026, when Caltrans updated their Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices.  This blog will examine the history of the US Route shield specifications in California and what is happening with the 2026 changes.  The blog cover photo is facing towards the terminus of California State Route 136 and at a G26-2 specification US Route 395 shield.  In the background Mount Whitney can be seen in the Sierra Nevada range.   ...

May 2023 Ontario Trip (Part 3 of 3)

  Over the years, I have made plenty of trips to Ontario, crisscrossing the southern, central and eastern parts of the province. Living in Upstate New York, it's pretty easy to visit our neighbor to the north, or is that our neighbor to the west? Ottawa is one of my favorite cities to visit anywhere in the world, plus I've discovered the charm of Kingston, the waterfalls of Hamilton (which is on the same Niagara Escarpment that brings us Niagara Falls), the sheer beauty of the Bruce Peninsula, and more. But I hadn't explored much of Cottage Country. So I decided to change that, and what better time to go than over Memorial Day weekend, when the daylight is long and I have an extra day to explore. On the third and final day of my trip, I started in Huntsville and made my way through Muskoka District and Haliburton County, passing by many lakes along the way. I stopped in towns such as Dorset, Haliburton and Bancroft before making a beeline down to Belleville and then over th...

Ghost Town Tuesday; Nichols, FL

A couple years ago I spent a lot of spare time exploring phosphate mining ghost towns in the Bone Valley of Polk County, Florida.  One ghost town in particular called Nichols on Polk County Route 676 west of Mulberry caught my eye due to a relative lack of documentation on ghosttowns.com. Nichols was created in 1905 during the early phosphate mining boom in the Bone Valley region.  For the time Nichols was unusual since it had company housing in the Nichols Mine site and private residences outside the gate.  Nichols is only about two miles west of Mulberry which probably made it a somewhat reasonable commute even by the wonky standards of the early 20th Century.  Most of the Bone Valley region was relatively remote which made commuting or homesteading impractical which is why there are so many ghost towns in the area.  The company housing section of Nichols was phased out and abandoned by 1950. The Nichols town site is largely abandoned and could "possibl...